Grounded…. innnn… spaaaacce…
I’m not doing really long spoiler tags because I don’t think people are actually RSSing this fairly new setup for my blog. If it is really true that you are and spoilers are showing up on a feed you can comment or something but I anticipate I will not encounter this problem.
I guess it’s official that I like math puzzles better than word puzzles. Math puzzles are not arbitrary. Math puzzles are just math, and math does not lie to you.
I still spent, like, an hour on the math puzzle in this game before realizing that the off-line reflector meant I had to do the “outside of the box” array range and overshoot the laser on one side so that it would bounce back through the grid without the use of the fourth reflector. So I arranged it in a way that almost worked and then totally had to rearrange it in a way that did work. For some reason I was assuming I could still somehow utilize the fourth reflector, it was just fixed in place, and didn’t notice that it was not getting involved in any of the “bounce” messages until I realized I had no solution without moving it, and had to redraw my grid based on the classic “think outside the box” method for solving this. Of course if I wasn’t aware of the existence of the brainteaser this is obviously based on it would’ve been a bit harder.
After spending an hour solving the geometry puzzle that made up the bulk of this game I found the ending/endings a little abrupt. I didn’t know if I had just taken an inordinately long time with that puzzle or if that was all that the game really ended up being, which was okay, it just was a little startling to see “then you win!” I mean I figured I would get the girl. You know, why introduce a girl in the 11th hour, and tell me she’s pretty, if action-movie-romance will then not be at all implied?
The only thing I really object to is “prime probe.” That was completely guess-the-verb. There’s no excuse for not using “activate probe,” or a word the computer actually uses at some point, in this sequence instead of “prime.”
So, um, the majority of my time on this game was spent solving the central puzzle, which was not a story element, but since I was able to solve it unaided it makes me happy and feel less stupid than other puzzle games in the comp have made me felt.
Boy this is starting to seem arbitrary, huh? Um, hooray math!
Edit: After glancing at other reviews I may be the only person to actually draw out a grid and try to complete the geometry puzzle unaided. I’m not sure if I should feel good about that or feel like a sucker. I did have the walkthrough available anyway, just resisted looking at it for that part. I did need it for one thing: goddamn “prime probe” which I suppose everyone hates!
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